“ And here’s the worse part: They aren’t necessarily wrong on that specific issue. In a conference call last week, Strava was point-blank clear that if they don’t get more subscribers and become profitable, there’s a pretty good chance there won’t be a Strava in a year.”

The free version will still do this, and will act as a basic ride logging tool.

I’ve been wanting to sub to Strava for a while and kept getting the free trial offer, but only with the billed annually option, there’s now a free 60 day trial with a monthly billed option.

I use the route planner a fair bit, and it could do with some improvement (which it’s now getting).

The key thing is:

In a conference call last week, Strava was point-blank clear that if they don’t get more subscribers and become profitable, there’s a pretty good chance there won’t be a Strava in a year.

I record my runs/rides on garmin and wahoo devices/software but everything pulls into strava as my main riding/running log, so I’m happy to sub. Others may not, but I also think a lot of the free users probably don’t care about the segments, or route mapping etc.

If I read it right, KOMs are still there, just not more than the top 10 and drops follower leader board.

I don’t care about any of that anyway and just compare my segment times but only of vague interest.

I’d be happy with segments even being purely a paid thing. Less sensitive trails wrecked by hordes 😏. Cutting off third party apps might also mean Strava segments not showing up in Trailforks, so also a good thing. Trails actually added to Trailforks can be managed. Strava segments are not.

I’m a subscriber, I find it fairly useful to be honest. I zwift, Sufferfest and ride outdoors. It’s a handy comparative tool. I also find the mapping software pretty useful. I look at other riders on segments I’ve done to look at different routes, then I can link those into a new ride for me. Hoping they get enough new subscribers to let them keep going. I get it isn’t for everyone, but I’m a fan.

Don’t see the problem, it’s a great tool for negligible cost. Right now it has millions of users and makes zero profit, so what else can it do? If the feed is full of advertising people will moan. If they charge a fee, people will moan. If they go bust and take everyone’s data with them, people will moan.

Just drop advertising onto non-subscriber accounts, after all, it works here! 😉

As I work for a small IT company that requires subscriptions to pay my salary (and mortgage) I can understand why they need to do this but the manner in which they’ve done it confuses me. Seems like there’s gonna be a lot of activity for the 44,000 downstream app providers to figure out what to do next.

I just discovered the doogal.co.uk site yesterday and was browsing around and discovered some intriguing trails to explore. Hopefully this change doesn’t break it (BTW: I’m a Strava subscriber and I have been for many years. So I hope there are no repercussions because if the user base drops substantially, it loses it’s usefulness and I’ll cancel my subscription)

Frankly segments and also challenges for comparison with others are useless in many cases anyway until they acknowledge the existence of mountain bikes as an activity with their own segments and challenges. This has been on the much requested list for a very long time and ignored all along. Ebikes yes, MTBs, no.

I reckon giving too much functionality to the free version was probably a mistake, in hindsight.

Aye, also the paid-for additions were quite expensive and not all that universally useful. I’d always have been happy to pay a small sub or even a donation for basic strava but I definitely wasn’t paying the full rate for the full fat version.

I think, for non-subcribers, removing the ability to compare your times against your ride buddies will be the biggest negative. Personally, I’m not sure of the route builder…I tried it once and the “random” route generator provided some hilariously bad suggestions (like suicidal!) and there are plenty of other options around such as RWGPS & Komoot.

Sounds like they are dropping the subscription cost anyway to £4 per month for everything which seems reasonable. I only use the free version but might subscribe now- primarily for the route planning. I tend to look at everything in trainerroad for the analysis however.

Can’t see the issue. There are so many people who want everything for free but at some point someone has to pay for it. I pay for Strava and Veloviewer so that I can look at my heart rate zones (you need to pay Strava so that they’ll send the HR data to Veloviewer) and use them to explore new areas, the cost is minimal when you think about what I get out of it.

Like I said above, I’m only really bothered about comparing my own segments against myself so I can see if I’m progressing or not. Won’t be paying for it as I seem to have signed up to plenty of cheeky £5-10 pm subscriptions recently.

Bit of a bugger as I regularly use the route planner and do like to compare my times to people who I follow. Never seen the point of the paid for membership though so remained free. Now I guess I’ll have no choice but to lose out on those few things I use or cough up. I don’t fancy another monthly bill along with zwift and apple music on top of a single person mortgage and other bills etc. Will have to weigh it up and decide.

I already pay annually so I wouldn’t appear to be losing anything. But I do like to compare my times to those I follow and if the people I follow stop using Strava because of this it’s value to me drops

We love cheering you on, keeping the record of your achievements and connecting you with your community. To make sure we can keep doing that for many years to come, we’ve made some overdue changes.

Here’s more from our founders about how we’re making your motivation our focus.

Dear Strava community,

If nothing else, 2020 has been a year of regaining perspective. A silver lining of hard times like these is that they inspire introspection and focus – What matters the most to us? And how do we live up to that?

Our answers to those questions have only gotten clearer in the past few months, and we’re now leading the company with a single purpose: rededicating Strava to our community. We’re obsessing over our athletes – over you – and no one else.

Strava athletes deserve an affordable and constantly improving experience, and we hope you’ve noticed how focused we’ve been this year on delivering that. Our small but mighty team of 180 has released 51 athlete-facing improvements already in 2020, from Apple Watch syncing to new maps and metrics for snowsports, to a huge update to our Routes features, and a lot more. We’ve also removed some distractions, such as Sponsored Integrations (the closest we’ve ever come to putting ads in the feed). And we returned the option to sort your feed in chronological order. We heard how much that change drove you nuts, and admit it took a really long time to respond.

Dedicating Strava to the community is also a commitment to longevity. We are not yet a profitable company and need to become one in order to serve you better. And we have to go about it the right way – honest, transparent and respectful to our athletes. Our plan puts subscription at the centre of Strava.

This means that starting today, a few of our free features that are especially complex and expensive to maintain, like segment leaderboards, will become subscription features. And from now on, more of our new feature development will be for subscribers – we’ll invest the most in the athletes who have invested in us. We’ve also made subscription more straightforward by removing packs and the brand of Summit. You can now use Strava for free or subscribe, simple.

This focus on subscription ensures that Strava can serve athletes decades from now, and in an up-front way that honours the support of the athletes we serve today. We plan to take what we earn from these changes and reinvest straight back into building more and better features – not devising ways to fill up your feed with ads or sell your personal information. We simply want to make a product so good that you’re happy to pay for it.

Our mission is to connect athletes to what motivates them and help them find their personal best. We mean it now more than ever.

We think that £4 a month for Strava is money well spent. But we also know, especially lately, that there are athletes struggling to make ends meet and that the free version of Strava must remain high quality and useful. Rest assured that we will always offer a version of Strava for free, and you belong in this community whether you subscribe or not. We’re betting all our chips on you, either way. We hope you’ll bet on us.

We are beyond grateful for your business and your support, and thrilled to recommit ourselves entirely to you, our fellow athletes.

We’ve made improvements thanks to your feedback (with lots more planned this year!), and moved a few free features into the subscription to ensure Strava is around for years to come. Here’s the latest:New features for subscribers

A big Routes update, with planning & recommendations on iOS and Android

Matched Rides: Analyze performance on identical rides over time

See your full workout history with Training Log on iOS

Workout Analysis is now available for all activity types

Grade-Adjusted Pace (GAP) now on iOS and Android

Coming soon: A whole new way to compete on segments…

New subscription features that were previously free

Overall segment leaderboards (Top 10 view is still free)

Comparing, filtering and analyzing segment efforts

Route planning on strava.com, with a huge redesign launching soon!

Matched Runs: Analyze performance on identical runs over time

Training Log on Android and strava.com

Monthly activity trends and comparisons

Recent releases for all athletes

“Favorites first” feed settings and the return of the chronological feed

Lots of new features for subscribers, but prices stay the same! We’ve also simplified our offering to make subscribing easier to understand – we’ve said goodbye to the brand of Summit and splitting subscriptions into Packs. Now you just use Strava for free, or subscribe to Strava for the best of everything we do.

Some years ago there was even more functionality in the free version – you could see power data of other riders for example. I always thought that the extras of “Summit” or whatever they are calling the premium version this year weren’t worth it for the casual user. Then the power and HR data moved to Premium.

I only really use Strava as a data aggregator since other sites provide better functionality but off the back of Strava’s API. Veloviewer (£10/year) is much better for dissecting and visualising your rides and intervals.icu (free) is better for data analysis.

(you need to pay Strava so that they’ll send the HR data to Veloviewer)

Not sure that’s true – my HR and power data gets sent to intervals.icu from the free version, I’d imagine that’s also the case for Veloviewer.

Age related leaderboards have been premium since the early days. Segment analysis would have to be vastly improved to be genuinely useful.

Anyway, typical Strava UI – when I load the site there’s an announcement of a message from the company’s founders but I was checking the power/HR values of someone I follow and when I return the announcement has disappeared! So unless you respond immediately to something you never know what it was.

There’s a psychological aspect. If it were £3/mo I wouldn’t think twice about subscribing, but at £6 it’s a bit more of an annoyance even though I can afford it.

I use the route planning feature a lot as it’s the best place I know where you can use the heat map whilst planning routes and I can automatically transfer them to my device.

This sounds very familiar to another website and forum. Would more folk subscribe if the price was less – especially if folk don’t want all of the features that a more expensive subscription offers anyway?

I can understand why they are doing it, always seemed a lot for free. As a family we use it to share rides / routes / climbing / mileage / photos with friends. Segments / KoMs / QoMs are nice but will we pay near on £30/month to use them – no chance. If they remove the features we do use, still no chance. We shared virtually no rides during lockdown, and had to resort to talking to friends about them instead, which we found was nice!